The University Musical Society is bringing in a major production (14-17 October) of Sophocles’ tragedy by the renowned avant-garde director Ivo van Hove and starring the great French stage and screen actress Juliette Binoche. This production employs the award-winning translation of UM’s own Anne Carson.

In tandem is the RC’s Summer Read, one of the most famous adaptations of the play, Jean Anouilh’s Antigone of 1944, an Existentialist take on the Greek heroine set against the background of Nazi occupied France. Anouilh’s piece will receive a full staged-reading in the Keene Theater in September. Students will have the opportunity to take a one-credit minicourse in the first half of the semester based on attendance at or participation in these and other Antigone-related events in the RC. We are also planning a session of parallel scenes in Anouilh’s French, Bertolt Brecht’s German, and by the Northern Irish playwright Tom Paulin, as well as a play-reading of A .R. Gurney’s Another Antigone together with a screening of David Mamet’s film Oleanna.

Watch for a full schedule of these events, and please join us in the RC 2015 Community Summer Read. Read Anouilh's Antigone in the original French, as will many of our students, or find the Barbara Bray translation here.